Published: October 02, 2008 04:07 pm         

Cooperstown grad signs with major record label

By MICHELLE MILLER
Staff Writer

Cooperstown graduate Guerin Blask says he has always loved to play music, but didn’t always believe it would become his career. He said he had a childhood dream of becoming a pro baseball player.

However, music was Guerin’s destiny. According to his parents, David and Peg, both of Cooperstown, they cannot remember a time when their son did not have drumsticks in his hands. Guerin was introduced to `bebop’ music by his scientist/musician father at the age of seven months in Tucson , Arizona (Guerin’s birthplace). He began beating on everything and anything, said Peg; so she said she decided to show her son the Tupperware cabinet so he could crawl inside and choose a drumming tub. Peg said at about 18 months, Guerin brought her his small six inch tambourine and formed his first full sentence when he said, ``make circle bigger.’’ Guerin received a miniature preowned trap set and a pair of `real’ drumsticks for his second birthday and began playing at the Fourth Avenue Street Fair in Tucson at age 3.

``Music has always been a part of my life every day,’’ said Guerin via e-mail.

``That is how I knew I couldn’t do anything else.’’

Guerin is now a member of the alternative rock band `The Urgency,’ which recently signed with a major record label Mercury/Island Def Jam of the Universal Music Group. The band has just come off a two-month coast-to-coast summer tour and is currently in Los Angeles where members of the band are shooting a music video for their recently released single `Fingertips.’

The band also began another national tour yesterday. According to Guerin, the band will start in Los Angeles and make its way up the west coast, travel through the midwest and finish up on the east coast.

``It will be for about a month and we’re super excited for it,’’ Guerin said.

``Being on the road is a great thing because you get to see the country and perform your art for new people every day. It’s very difficult to be away from friends and family for long periods of time though,’’ added Guerin.

The release date for the band’s first album is still up in the air. It was originally scheduled to come out this month, but Guerin said the self titled album may be pushed back to early 2009.

``Don’t worry it is coming,’’ Guerin said. Guerin describes the band’s music as high-energy aggressive/ melodic rock.

``I think it’s unique because each of us in the band has such different influenced from one another so combining them makes for a pretty interesting combo,’’ said Guerin.

``Hopefully people dig it.’’

Guerin’s parents said they are extremely excited their son is getting a chance to see the country. They said the members of the band keep a video diary on their website that gives them a window to their journey.

``It’s the next best thing to being a fly on the wall,’’ they said. ``Each week we awake and click on to see the newest entry. The boys deal with overheating radiators, flat tires and lost guitars to bad weather, sleep deprivation and opposing opinions. And, sometimes, if they’re lucky, they wake up to a double rainbow.’’

``We sent our adult boy on the road and met up with a maturing young man on our first visit,’’ they added. Guerin is not the only member of his family that has music running through his veins. His father David has been a jazz trumpeter since the age of 13 and is a member of the Central New York Jazz Orchestra and free-lances with at least eight other regional bands. Guerin’s uncle Dean Blask is a pop-rock drummer. Peg said most of the locals remember her son as a pitcher for the regionalwinning high school baseball team in 1999. However, even back then Guerin was a part of a band that practiced in a basement on Fair Street.

Fall 2001 brought Guerin to professor Steve Brown’s jazz studies program at Ithaca College where he met Vermonters Ian Molla and his friend Kevin Coffrin. Coffrin asked Guerin to join them in their childhood dream of forming a rock band. It was not until after graduation and a move to New York City that the group found their vocalist Tyler Gurwicz, a musical theater student also from Vermont.

``With thousands of rock bands in New York City all competing for their chance in the limelight, The Urgency had to stay confident and persistent,’’ said Peg, who said in the late summer of 2007, the band’s hungry sound, through a series of fantastic serendipitous events, was picked out of the noise.

``The band members are thankful for getting their shot at making it. They have a great attitude, if it all ended tomorrow, we’ve had a great ride,’’ added Peg.

For a performance schedule, a tour of the band’s diary and a chance to listen to songs visit theurgency.com.